Hitherto, the development of tiny electronic tags has been advanced, so that techniques for weaving electronic tags into, for example, paper fibers have been available. The use of electronic tags ensures traceability. Traceability enables checking of the current place of an object.
Management of confidential information in digital form is being achieved by holding information in electronic form. However, in practice, confidential information is still exchanged using paper media. In methods for managing paper media, paper media are generally filed in cabinets that can be locked. However, for example, failure to file paper media and leaving paper media cause problems. Thus, a new method for managing confidential information for paper media is required.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-120475 discloses management of documents in which documents can be identified and managed at the sheet level using identifiers assigned to sheets.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2005-35095 discloses that, when a plurality of sets of printed materials are created, printing is performed for each of the sets of printed materials using sheets, a radio frequency identification tag being embedded only in a randomly determined page of the sheets, and records are kept so that an embedded radio frequency identification tag is association with a corresponding printed document.
Problems with existing solutions relate to the fact that when a user sends paper media that include electronic tags to destinations, the user needs to specify the destination of each paper medium. Moreover, traceability achieved by electronic tags ensures tracing of the distribution route and current place of a printed material but cannot determine whether the ownership of the printed material is assigned or the printed material is lent.